Today is a good day. While my brother has been an uncle for 15 years already, I'm now one myself. Landon Matthew Troxel was born at 3:37am August 31, 2017. The family is doing great.

Landon, this part's for you: you have some great parents who love you very much, and your extended family can't wait to meet you. You're on a rock that's speeding 'round a star at 67,000 miles per hour. The chances of you being here are 400 trillion to one, but now that you are, we all consider ourselves the lucky ones. Welcome to the planet.

When I think of summer, I think of vacation. It's a time for recharging my batteries and widening my experiences so I can be a better architect. Summer for my family means there's an adventure, and we went on a great one this year. We went to Lake Powell which is on the southern border of Utah and Arizona. It's picturesque, and not to be missed.

Here's a video showing our adventures from this past weekend. We had such a great time that I decided to make a video about it. Besides the main content of the video, our kids, I had a great time filming them and capturing many great moments on the new iPhone 6. My iPhone has always been a versatile workhorse, and the latest is no exception. It's an indispensable tool that is always with me. It's the best one yet, and it helps me make things like this.

I received my new space grey 64gb iPhone 6 on Friday after work. Needless to say I put it through its paces over the weekend and found it to be a true joy to use. The new camera stuff is just amazing; it's hard to explain just how good it is so I thought I'd just show you instead. Seriously - this thing is less than a quarter of an inch thick, makes crystal-clear images and video, and it's with me all day long. I couldn't wait to make something with it.

I used a few apps to create all of the raw files I used for the final footage including:

So here I am editing this all together in iMovie on my Mac Mini late Sunday night. I've watched it many times to get the timing better and the edit tighter, and I'm just in love the whole thing. This is what technology is so good for - helping me create something that my family will remember forever.

Both songs in the slideshow are by Bloc Party, and they make me want to dance: